Leonardo Bruni (1370-1444) was
born in Arezzo but became a Florentine citizen in 1416. He was deeply
involved in politics and held the position of chancellor in the city
government. Bruni was an unflagging scholar and is considered to be one of
the first humanists, along with Francesco Petrarca and Angelo Poliziano.
Among his many scholarly accomplishments Bruni is credited with creating a new
style of translation that sought to give the reader the overall meaning of the
original text rather than a word-for-word translation.1

Bruni's History of the
Florentine People has been called "the greatest historical work of the
Renaissance."2 The work was begun in 1415 and Bruni worked
on it for the rest of his life, supported financially by Florence's city
council. The History is a monument to the greatness of Bruni's
adopted city and is considered to be the beginning of a new method of writing
civic history. Instead of the medieval-style chronicle, Bruni wrote his history using
Livy as a model for language, format, and style.3 Bruni also
relied on the concrete information provided by the city archives as the basis
for his writing.

The edition of Historiae
Florentini populi displayed below is a translation from the original Latin
into Italian completed by another Florentine, Donato Acciauoli. The
following excerpt on the foundation of the city of Florence is from James
Hankins' English translation published by Harvard University Press in 2001.

From History
of the Florentine People, I.1-3:

The founders of Florence were Romans
sent by Lucius Sulla to Faesulae4. They were his veterans who
had given outstanding service in the civil war as well as in other wars,
and he granted them part of the territory of Faesulae in addition to the
town itself and its old inhabitants [...].

That is how Sulla's veterans came to
Faesulae and divided the fields among themselves. Many of them
decided, however, that amidst the security of the Roman empire it was
unnecessary to inhabit an inaccessible hill town. So they left the
mountain and began to form settlements along the banks of the Arno and the
Mugnone in the plain below. The new city located between these two
waterways was at first called Fluentia and its inhabitants Fluentini.
The name lasted for some time, it seems, until the city grew and
developed. Then, perhaps just through the ordinary process by which
words are corrupted, or perhaps because of the wonderfully successful
flowering of the city, Fluentia became Florentia.